


A Guide to Tragedy

by FrostPrince



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, M/M, though whether Sburb doesn't exist entirely or not is up to interpretation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-12 22:51:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4497744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrostPrince/pseuds/FrostPrince
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A universe is born from heat and mistakes. Though it's pretty, in a chaotic sort of way. It's too bad everything will go out the same way it came in. Oops, spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Guide to Tragedy

**Author's Note:**

> Salutations, people. owO This fic was inspired by lots of amazing JohnDave fanfics I've read and it also serves to defy some tropes. The writing is obscurely poetic and very stream-of-consciousness, so keep that in mind. :3

A universe is born from heat and mistakes. The true source is a mystery, though maybe it was thanks to the realm of quantum potentiality, hidden in the omnipresent mass of nothingness that weighs on existence. Or maybe my atheism can be disproved. Or maybe said nothingness is the proof against my lack of beliefs. Unlikely, but I’ve seen weirder. For now and forever, though, the universe doesn’t care. It’s brimming with the fundamental forces and components of reality, ready to shape a hazardous labyrinth of galactic filaments and pockets of emptiness. But it’ll take its sweet time, of course. The universe is lame, in my reserved opinion. Nonetheless, a scorching heat excites every crevice, every piece of something, and an eternally expansive bubble is getting ready to incubate this grotesquely large, meaningless birth. Though it’s pretty, in a chaotic sort of way. Especially given the almost wondrous things it holds in store. Almost. It’s too bad everything will go out the same way it came in. Oops, spoilers.

—

Mother. Fucking. Galaxies. Everywhere. I’m so sorry you missed the great ionization of the universe’s gas and those undoubtedly prominent “first times”, those gravitational milestones that claw at your awed brain like an obsessive back scratcher, but we should both know that they don’t matter. Shit happened, and now light is struggling as fast as the laws of the fabric will allow it. Shadows dance wherever a photon’s exertion is not enough. Clusters of plasma and eyesores go on their stumbling, inanimate journey to find purpose, their fledgling escapees batting at the dark, and vice versa. It’s like a game of cosmic pong. Did I mention how much I hate games? With a passion? Yeah, thought I’d bring that up. Still, stars will emulate their preternatural creator. Their spiralling containers will produce a vast number of failed experiments in the process. The whole spectrum of Goldilocks’ troubles will be explored. Porridge will be spilled. Tears will be shed. Ah, well. And then eventually, some idiot who probably isn’t special compared to everyone else will win the lottery. Relatively. In actuality, there’ll be a ton of lottery winners, and they’ll get the chance to see what futile visionaries and financially wasteful dimwits they can be as they weave oceans and molecules together to make what only science can seriously refer to as “life”. Sure, there’s other environments out there that do the job adequately, but I think it’s been established that I don’t care about many things. That is one of them. Bite me.

—

A young child stands in their bedroom, a sizeable space if one has a narrowed line of sight. The place is adorned with a light, another light that’s not quite a light as the child’s descendants will soon discover, and 7 elder siblings off in their own places. Compared to a lot of similar architectural feats on the street, this one’s pretty tiny and unassuming. But the child doesn’t know any better. To them, this is enough, and so they start doing their own thing. Like any child when they’re bored, they use their imagination. From it comes a globe of possibility as the setting forms, followed by the child’s designs born from the reckless slurry of their fluid mind. They start small, the child testing their capabilities with uncertainty, dipping a toe into the water, but with practice comes the ability to nurture these thoughts into something grander. Personally, I think this kid needs some elder figure in its life to knock it down a peg. Seriously, what the hell do they think they’re doing, being all wide-eyed and into the whole idea of making something? Just like their mother who took after THEIR mother. Thanks, brat, for bringing a hideous failure into the world. Moms suck.

—

It doesn’t end. By that, I mean the struggle. The creative procedure. A bunch of builders are let loose and are told to go wild. OBVIOUSLY, that’s gonna end up in lots of fallen structures and ancient ruins and crap. But nooo, the biggest offense of all just HAD to pave the way for my “biological” mother, which then resulted in me. I feel both old and young. One small step compared to one giant leap, you know? But the universe trudges on inside of me, still playing the same game, still frolicking through fields of fucking daisies as it asks itself “What unplanned scheme am I gonna undertake, now that I’ve brought a squealing baby into the world, a baby that had its optimism built up through shades and a badass mentor figure, only for it to come undone just as easily?” A flash of psychotic brilliance comes up, but it doesn’t have a name yet, and in any case, we weren’t done with the most recent of mental concoctions. An idea that HAS a name. It’s name is Dave Motherfucking Strider. Last name of unknown origin, middle name self-given. Prepare yourself for the most elaborate fuckup this side of existence.

—

The idea of Dave M.F. Strider, ever-so-shockingly, turns out to be a bad one. A very bad one. The creator of this idea was killed in exchange for the terrible thing she conjured. The result was me trying to come to terms with my screwed-up existence as I was raised by the only family I had left. Bro wasn’t a mother or a father, though. He was more like that one super cool, hipster teacher you’d have who’s the epitome of sex appeal and who speaks in convoluted metaphors and faux-philosophical quotes. Metaphor notwithstanding, in my case. He was just a parentally-inept dude with a creepy puppet fetish and who could be reasonably epic with shitty eBay anime swords. Something went right at birth for him, something that fulfilled all of his dreams of grandeur. It was just another slap in the face, I suppose. Other slaps to the face included having to be endured during my childhood, avoiding meals which I deemed revolting with my infant mind and disrupting everything he did. It’s amazing I didn’t end up dead in a ditch with Bro’s car speeding away yet. This was only the beginning, I promise you. We have the whole ordeal of THAT ONE KID to get to. Ugh.

—

THAT ONE KID. I heard his name everyday when the teacher (a non-cool but very faux-philosophical one) called it. Then I consistently forgot it seconds later. But one day it stuck, and that was that. From then on, I acknowledged the existence of John Egbert. THAT ONE KID who then stole my Play-Doh when I was fucking using it so he could make a smiley face. THAT ONE KID whose actions I responded to by trying to make sure he could never wear a smiley face again. With my fists. Good times…aside from spending time in the principal’s office and having to face the black-eyed Egbert staring murderously at me, his father on the verge of but not quite doing the same to my Bro. I was bailed out. With a warning. And an approving pat on the back. And an enemy made.

—

And so, years would go by without us coming in contact again. I had assumed he went to a different elementary school, but I’d later learn otherwise… as a 12 year old on the internet revered as a god for ironically shitty web comics. Jokes on them. If only they knew. At first, I had one friend. Rose LaLonde: a pretentious but ridiculously perceptive person who could be despised, respected and genuinely admired at the same time. She saw through the thick layers of irony and breached the digital wall to find an immature kid fooling around on the Webz like he owned it. Passive-aggressive remarks were exchanged, and thus bloomed a friendship to last a lifetime…not quite. Internet companionship was a last resort that had resulted from lots of choice insults and fights at school. I kept up the nonchalant facade as I had been taught well, but still…it would be a while before anyone saw my eyes from behind my shades. Anyway, some time later, Rose introduced me to Jade. An overly excitable girl who concealed her terrifying scientific and tech intelligence under a quirky attitude. The three of us started with instant messaging, filling up chats with nonsense (mostly my bad) that either faded into obscurity or became long-standing inside jokes between us. It escalated to voice chats and, after a LOT of snappiness towards my protests, video chats.

And then Jade just HAD to show us her new friend. He’d moved to Washington ‘cause of his father’s job, apparently. He was “friendly and funny and an all around cool guy ;)”, so naturally I gave an indifferent “whatever”. Rose, expectedly, seemed eager for a new psychotherapy project. The guy was added and the name popped up…

Jesus fuck.

Not that he seemed to remember. His first sign of life had been a mere “hi :D”. I decided to keep the obvious truth from him the rest of our lives.

It all went downhill from there.

—

We didn’t need to adjust to one another too much. In some weird way, we clicked. We prodded each other at insane hours of the night. We swapped joking messages, and I showed off my superior rap skills, and he did this thing where he was genuine with his emotions? It was some freaky shit, yo. Like, he never even laughed at how much he worshipped the ground Nick Cage metabolized on or whatever. I was concerned for his well-being and let him know frequently. Bro would disapprove of him so hard. Egbert acknowledged my warnings while also sending a generous helping of “fuck yous”. It became a cycle. We were entrenched in this bonding shit. We were making this happen, I being the fine bomb of a star and he being my faithful planet-y satellite. Okay, it was really more of a binary system. I give him credit in being inexhaustibly upbeat and active and talkative and humorously tasteless. I would forever be there to provide the much-needed chillness and genre-savvy-ness, as well as knock his taste in everything down a peg for the lulz. However, it all ended with us joining forces to ignite the world’s envy towards our totally solidified companionship. That shit be tight like it was cooking under the pressure of the planet’s crust, like a fucking diamond made of compatriotism and inseparability. Gonna erupt said shit into the sky and let it rain black, steaming shards of unavoidable brohood and mirth onto the innocents. Pompei’s fucking turned to stone from glaring at the undeniably solid union we’ve got and they tried and failed to recreate it. We were the new molecular bond. Johnium and Daveium, we weren’t your pretty neon gas in a strip club street sign. We were that first-grade science fair volcano you overestimated the amount of baking soda for and now there’s no going back 'cause you’re gonna drown in the incestuous slurry of two of life’s fundamental building blocks: swag and sexiness.

This continued. For a while. Both the friendship and the …whatever it is I do with the run-on imagery.

—

Then I discovered I was sexually attracted to my best online friend.

My best online MALE friend. Exclamation point. -> !

We’d video chatted before. I’d memorized the landscape of his face for quite some time, the curvature of his cheek muscles and the creases between his eyebrows. But going through puberty in the late months of being 13 changed the whole situation the next time we saw each other’s faces. I couldn’t recognize what I was feeling for a while. I passed it off as noticing, for the umpteenth time, that John Egbert has a really punchable face. But, like, not the kind I’d actually punch, at least not yet? It’s mostly an endearing term. Maybe I had to fill, like, a punching quota between then and a few years from then, when I would go mad from the lack of punching punchable faces and stomp across the country to John just so I could specifically punch his face and fulfil my destiny. John’s face wasn’t punchable due to his appearance, though. It was all in the way he was so god damn WHOLESOME. It physically hurt. It could make muscles tense and seethe with irritation at how INNOCENT AND FUCKING GLEEFUL he was. That stupid smile and stupid buck teeth that made him look like a non-existent God’s fucking angel and his snorting laughter at any lame joke that was spewed from my mouth and his lips that seemed to grow every day or maybe I just needed to stop leaning towards my fucking screen. AND THIS WAS ALL A GOOD THING?!

Oh, yes, but then, maybe a month later, one fateful day while browsing…er…PICTURES online (hint hint: pornography)… it maaay have dawned on me that I was flagrantly into John. I didn’t know what bisexuality was, nor did I think I was really attracted to guys. Women? Voluptuous regions ON women? That, I knew I enjoyed. But somewhere in between my Bro’s badass MANLINESS and the male heroes saving damsels in distress on TV, I lost the sense of appreciation for muscles and strong jaw lines. And dicks. How was I supposed to know dicks could be considered anything but horrendously similar to the puppets my Bro filmed at inopportune times and sold in a market that had too high a demand to be comforting? But looking at women, some subconscious part of me realized that I wanted to do the same things with John that I’d do to them. This information was then safely tucked away in the nether areas of my cranium. Out of sight, out of mind.

So I continued with my life. With the nagging suspicion that John was attractive as a disconnected thought from my subjectively-perceived heterosexuality. I survived.

—

And THEN, oooooh THEEEEN, the group agreed to meet up.

It was a plan that had been in the works for years. As 16 year olds with 3 to 4 years of laborious, heartfelt fucking FRIENDSHIP between us, it was about time. Quite the wait to be in physical proximity with the people who knew you best and who you preferred the company of the most, lemme tell you. Also, if I may be so humble, I was immensely grateful for having a rich friend with a roomy house. The apartment was pretty empty with just me and my Bro, but it still suffocated under the lives led there, and I don’t know if it’s 'cause of the small space or just the way Bro could watch me while I wasn’t looking. Always. Through a crack in my bedroom door, or while turning a corner, or stealing glances through his elusive shades while I was just trying to eat dinner, or just…it was tiring. I wanted out and it was weird. I couldn’t explain it.

We’d video chatted before Jade got on her flight, which would commence her long-ass journey to America. I didn’t mean to be insensitive, but it was hard paying attention to either Rose or Jade. Like, what was up with John’s eyes? Since when did the sky all up and leave its place above and casually saunter over to John’s face and go all “Yo I’m gonna crash for a bit, you mind? Good, don’t care.”? It was kinda mesmerizing and a major threat to my ego. He always ranted about how cool my eyes must look behind my shades, but I’m just like…look in a fucking mirror??? Also, could you turn your blinding teeth down a notch? Just what even…?

Travel came in the arduous use of my legs and, even moreso, the arduous non-use of my legs. Everything was a haze of receding into seats and staring out windows, but then it was like a breath of clairvoyance for once in my life…to see them THERE. Jade, with her wild hair and almost-manic emerald irises drilling friendship holes into me. Rose, offering an uncontested, graceful application of eldritch fashion, with a regal bun holding up straw hair. And…

Oh wow, to actually feel the Slime Ghost shirt under my fingers. Like meeting a celebrity in the flesh. To inhale the inviting essence of fraternity and… cake? It was very HIM. I tried not to let out a whine when the hands on my back returned to his sides, instead channelling my energy into matching his grin. As coolly as possible, naturally.

The drive to the mansion was laced with exaggerated hand gestures on Jade and John’s part. Rose and I would often give empathetic glances towards each other, but our pursed smiles gave us away. Exiting the car and walking up the ornate stone steps, I noted the reality of the situation.

A week of summer vacation with my best friends. This would surely be the most carefree, exhilarating time of my short lifespan.

I was wrong. Per usual.

I think the worst part of existence was how right I was about everything going horribly. I was even inclined to believe ignorance was bliss. But I don’t like lies, or at least ignoring the truth. Maybe that was the appeal of the breath emanating from the sleeping bag next to me. He was my opposite. No, I don’t mean in the contrived “opposites attract” kind of way. I’m sure the term is meant to reference complementary personalities and stuff. My harsh cynicism mixed with Egbert’s anti-that. It was an ideal I both loathed and sought. To sleep soundlessly for once, to have my chest rise and fall in a rhythmic manner. I could almost touch the rainbows and unicorns that played in his mind and it was somewhat gag-worthy. Since I was utterly incapable of having this, the next best thing was to live vicariously through him.

I wanted to tell him all of this. In a less intrinsically moronic way. While staring into his eyes. Maybe bequeathing the honour of returning the favour to him. It would be so easy, just reaching out with trembling, pale and perspiring fingers, to let every bit of touched skin speak for itself. To exhale a formless song even the most tone deaf of people could respond to. To feel the reverberations of a synchronized heartbeat, a dead giveaway.

But you should’ve predicted the real outcome already…

—

I was 18 and having my fill of raging hormones, pessimism and college applications. I would’ve been hesitant about continuing the torture of my academic career, but the prospect was more appealing than the asphyxiating air around me as I tried and failed to sleep in my own bed. The splotches of overexposed nerves tinted with midnight hues, concealed by long sleeve shirts and evasive movements in the halls. The feeling that I was climbing towards a goal only for the ladder to wobble and topple backwards. And the all-pervasive gaze of a man in his 30s who could’ve had everything he wanted by now, yet for some reason had been confined to a shitty apartment building in Texas, wasting his time with a dependant ass.

The promise of rooming with John Egbert and Rose LaLonde was too enticing to pass up, so I passed under the watch of his constant expressionlessness. And left. For good. I should’ve felt like I was flying… instead, I was a featherless bird jumping from a rooftop, which would’ve been an easier task to accomplish than the rest of my life. As I’m positive you’ve come to realize. Still, one sprained ankle from moving boxes later, I was settled into a lifetime of isolation with my thoughts and two best friends. Not gonna lie, getting greeted with warmth on my back and an excitably happy breath on my neck…it brought my hopes up. Marginally. I could pretend my dreams could transcribe themselves to real life and everything would be fine. I could envision delicate thumbs rubbing circles into my palms at 6:30 am, my first thought being the gaping mouth sending shallow wisps of air towards me. I could do more than just survive…

—

You’d think I’d have been the one to start drinking first. Honestly, I expected the same thing. But nay, it was good sir Egbert to try his hand at the sinkhole of inebriation. With an experienced guide in the form of one ebony-clad, articulate and condescending-as-hell young woman, certain nights were spent drowning out boisterous laughter and the scent of hospitals. It was on such a night that a buck tooth smile rudely intruded a truly ILL mixing session. I didn’t ask. Ignoring the closeness prodding at my peripheral, I tried to lose myself in-oh jegus he was kissing me.

…

…

…

NO!

THAT…

THAT’S NOT HOW IT WAS SUPPOSED TO WORK!

We were supposed to tread carefully. Fall into place gently through passive remarks and hinting gestures. At least the tide had some fucking patience, but this idiot thought he could come in torrential waves, sweeping me up until my lungs were infiltrated and I sank away from where everything was and what everything meant. It wasn’t even tasteful! A lop-sided movement to meet my lips that ended with him missing his mark, which prompted me to shoot straight up and put a good mile and probably more between us.

I was out the door and hurling myself over steps and blinking away cracked grey walls and it just wasn’t right, it wasn’t right, it wasn’t right.

A slurred apology rang in my ears from above, but it’s definitely been established that I don’t care about many things.

Bite. Me.

—

The plan failed.

I tried. For a good two weeks or so. (I give off the impression that I was good with time, but in reality I wanted to stay as far away from time expertise as I could. I couldn’t excel at it. Ever.). THEN I made the pathetic decision to instead act “mature.” To lead JOHN EGBERT to the dorm roof and, oh sweet mother of fuck, “talk about our feelings.” He said it had been around 6 years now, so we were in the same situation. His was slightly different, though. Some good ol' fashion homosexuality.

I taught him what very little patience I had for people making moves on me while drunk, and once that had been ESTABLISHED... we started small.

It’s not like we didn’t watch movies together at night all the time, only now I could cross the distance between our thighs and make my hints waaay less subtle. At some point, he tried to make one of those cheesy romantic dinners with candlelight, flowers in glass vases and everything, but I had a policy of not going near those kinds of things. I had a reputation to uphold, yo. We reached a balance in the end. I reserved the right to initiate physical cues, and used this privilege one day while watching Night at the Museum for kicks (in my case only. Sigh.). As the credits rolled and his fanboying finished, I went in…

John was oxygen. I moved my hands to his torso, be it purposely or subconsciously. I felt it too late to expect his lips impatiently pushing in return. I felt numb, weightless, excluding the intensity that sparked at my lips and travelled everywhere in rapid lightning crackles. I tried to feel him in his entirety, mapping his semi-muscular landscape with my hands, his arms to his chest to his stomach to everywhere I once thought to be inaccessible. I grabbed and pushed and felt. My legs intertwined with his… and we pushed ourselves onto the floor.

He let out an “ow” and then laughed. My smile pressed against the sound. He draped his arms around me and reeled me in, clutching the back of my head with one hand as the other breached my shirt, trailing my back, tracing sporadic paths. I inhaled his presence and he entered my system as something more than human. I firmly held his head closer, needing the pressure of his body to crush me until I couldn’t tell who or where I was. But this time in the right way.

He was John and we were unstoppable.

Tick tock.

—

Twenty-seven meant we’d waited long enough.

After graduation a few years ago, we'd gotten our own apartment. Air was breathable for once and fridges held food. It was a home. We, I being the film major and John being the comedian, worked flawlessly together. We’d spend hours on our laptops in bed as I took calls and he sculpted quality humour (no thanks to him and all thanks to me). On a slow day, I left the house and headed to the quaint jewellery store nearby.

I was giving in to the clichés. It figured he’d do this to me.

I waited two weeks before catching him in the sneakiest trap of them all: appeasing his nostalgia for Nick Cage movies. This whole thing with expressing myself in the middle of shitty flicks with shitty actors was a hard habit to crack, but I wouldn’t have changed it for the world.

I looked for an opening, and then slipped the ring onto his finger.

All I heard was an “oh” followed by a “fuck.”

First he said yes. I mean, TECHNICALLY we kissed, but it’s the same thing, clearly. Then he went to get HIS ring, which had been in a case collecting dust for who knew how long? Oh, nearly 2 months, only to be held in faltering hands and tucked away repeatedly. Huh.

Not much sleeping happened that night, but there would be plenty of time for that.

—

Here’s a belated warning: life is unfair.

Life is unfair because we took as many vacations to exotic, culture-ridden places as possible. Life is unfair because we celebrated countless birthdays, anniversaries and holidays together. Life is unfair because we were showered with praise and success. Life is unfair because whenever I got home, John would be there with his never-ending toothy smiles. We’d fall asleep in each other’s arms, wake up the same way, repeat the cycle, and everything was alright. Life is unfair because I could summarize every feeling of elation and fantasy into one single syllable name.

Life is unfair because John was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Life is unfair because I was 40 and John was dead with a knife wound through the chest and his murderer on the loose.

Life is unfair because I didn’t cry. Because this entire time, despite everything telling me otherwise, I’d never been surprised by this outcome.

No, it’s not that I’m bad at time. It’s that I’m too good at it.

—

I tried to move on in various ways. My work. Flings. Unconventional hobbies. I took advice from a cancer-stricken Rose and began writing, mainly about bold and disturbed heroes overcoming different types of obstacles in their life and always coming out better than before. And happy. I liked the message my stories gave. Wow, would I die a hypocrite. But that wouldn’t be for a very long time.

—

I reached the point where I lived lifetimes in only days. My head was a maelstrom and everything hurt. I didn’t care if there was a minor statistical possibility that I’d live to be a hundred. It had to end, and it had to be by my hands clasping pills and eyes letting go of the weight they’d held for an eternity.

I was Dave Strider, and I spent half of my lifespan never quite full and the other half completely empty. And I didn’t wake up in time to tip that scale.

—

Everyone knows what happened after that. The worst idea in the universe lived on until the sun scorched their home, but we latched onto hope among the boundless other stars. One by one, they went out, as well, and someday, a day too far removed from any rational concept of time, the idea had burned long enough and flickered out. Galaxies dissipated. Black holes remained, locked in competition for supremacy over missed opportunities and stray matter. But even they faded. Life was a fable that couldn’t be told ever again.

—

No one knows what happened after that. There’s the distinct possibility that everything meaningful was done. I’d like to think that were the case. Imagine if, in the realm of imagination and hope, something sparked. Not a really big phenomenon, but enough. It would erase over the wasteland of the previous fairy tale rejects, rewriting and making a brand new story that turned out exactly the same way as the previous one. Another futile attempt at captivating an audience and giving them a reason to keep reading.

Every piece of what was once me no doubt floats inside the epilogue. A new scenario could bring me back together and bring HIM back together and we could go through the motions of existing once again, only to dance around each other forever. Never lasting in each other’s presence. All the fictional timelines swirl in the cesspool of a stupid child’s mind, an idea without a name yet but with a dangerous mask of purpose.

—

It ignites. What an idiot.


End file.
